Star Wars - Darth Plagueis

from a host of worlds arrived to participate in mock Senate trials in and around Hanna City and to tour Chandrila’s vast agricultural projects, wilderness areas, coral reefs, and garden parks. It was in Gladean Park—a game reserve outside coastal Hanna—that Plagueis paid young Palpatine an unannounced visit. But it was Plagueis who was surprised.
    “I knew you would come, Magister,” Palpatine said when Plagueis and 11-4D turned up at one of the game reserve’s viewing blinds.
    “How did you know?”
    “I knew, that’s all.”
    “And just how often are your premonitions correct?”
    “Almost always.”
    “Curious,” 11-4D remarked while Palpatine was hurrying away to excuse himself from the company of two friends.
    Plagueis recognized the older male as Palpatine’s mentor in the youth program, Vidar Kim, and sensed that the comely black-haired female was Kim’s paramour. At the conclusion of Palpatine’s animated explanation, Kim turned his head to show Plagueis a look of disapproval before moving off with his companion.
    “Your mentor doesn’t care much for me,” he said when Palpatine returned.
    Palpatine dismissed it. “He doesn’t know you.”
    Standard weeks had passed without any communication betweenthe two of them. Judging by Palpatine’s mood, he knew nothing about the forced meeting in the Lake Country, and yet he was agitated just the same, possibly in reaction to something Cosinga had done to monitor or foil his son’s offworld holotransmissions. With Damask Holdings’ secret agent silenced, the royals had gained ground. Despite Tapalo’s denials that the deal with the Banking Clan had dissolved, the travel ban imposed on the Muuns had planted seeds of doubt among the electors, and the contest for the throne was becoming more heated with each passing day. Worse, the Banking Clan’s interest in Naboo was beginning to wane.
    “We’ll have to keep this meeting brief,” Plagueis told Palpatine while they were following an elevated pathway that connected the viewing blind to one of the park’s rustic lodges. “Your father may have dispatched surveillance personnel.”
    Palpatine ridiculed the idea. “He is monitoring my offworld communiqués—that’s why you haven’t heard from me—but even he knows better than to have me watched.”
    “You underestimate him, Palpatine,” Plagueis said, stopping in the middle of the pathway. “I spoke with him at Convergence.”
    Palpatine’s mouth fell open. “The lake house? When? How—”
    Plagueis made a soothing gesture and explained in great detail what had taken place. Concluding, he said, “He threatened, too, to place you out of reach.”
    All the while Plagueis spoke, Palpatine was storming through circles on the narrow path, shaking his head in anger and balling his fists. “He can’t do this!” he snarled. “He hasn’t the right! I won’t allow it!”
    Palpatine’s fury buffeted Plagueis. Blossoms growing along the sides of the pathway folded in on themselves, and their pollinators began to buzz in agitation. FourDee reacted, as well, wobbling on its feet, as if in the grip of a powerful electromagnet. Had this human truly been born of flesh-and-blood parents? Plagueis asked himself. When, in fact, he seemed sprung from nature itself. Was the Force so strong in him that it had concealed itself ?
    Palpatine came to a sudden halt and whirled on Plagueis. “You have to help me!”
    “How can I help you?” Plagueis asked. “He’s your father.”
    “Tell me what to do! Tell me what you would do!”
    Plagueis placed a hand on Palpatine’s shoulder and began to walk slowly. “You could use this incident as a means of emancipating yourself.”
    Palpatine frowned. “Naboo doesn’t honor that practice. I’m in his sway until I’m twenty-one years old.”
    “The legalities of emancipation don’t interest me, and they shouldn’t interest you. I speak of freeing yourself—of completing the act of recreation you began when you rejected your given name.”
    “You mean disobey him?”
    “If that’s as far as you’re willing to go. And without thought to consequences.”
    “I’ve wanted to …”
    “Uncertainty is the first step toward self-determination,” Plagueis said. “Courage comes next.”
    Palpatine shook his head, as if to clear it. “What would I do?”
    “What do you want to do, Palpatine? If the choice was yours and yours alone.”
    The youth hesitated. “I don’t want to live as ordinary